I worked together with my Italian brother for a very long time now. Ever since I returned from the brutal Vietnam War, I joined forces with the Italian mafia to pull off the biggest heist of New Bordeaux’ history. Things worked out just fine and we managed to get away with tons of money, that’s when things went South and my Italian friends betrayed me and my family. Since that moment I’m on a constant quest for revenge.
Welcome to New Bordeaux
The Mafia 3 presentation started with a global look at the world we’ll be living in called New Bordeaux. This is basically an interpretation of New Orleans. The best part of this map is that it looks like it’s going to be huge. We’ve just seen some small fragments of what this world has to offer during our presentation, but what we’ve seen looked very impressive. There’s the Bayou, which is that mysterious place filled with drugs and alligators and then there’s the beating heart of downtown New Bordeaux, filled with cars and people. It’s great to see this difference in districts and it reminded us of the Grand Theft Auto V map, which had the same kind of variation.
The game didn’t look as polished as it should but that could also be caused by the monitor that was a little too big to showcase the game. With that being said, you’re entirely free to roam around in the world as you please. There are a lot of classic cars and boats you can use to get to your location. These vehicles looked great and the classic radio tunes only added to that great retro vibe. We couldn’t enjoy the environment for too long however since it was time to delve into one of the missions shortly after.
Stealth or gun blazing
The goal of the mission was to take down one of the big guys of the Italian mafia who was currently staying at the Royal Hotel in downtown New Bordeaux. You could go gun blazing or stealth, we went for stealth during this presentation. Since we decided to go for stealth, we had to steal the car of one of the associates of the big boss so we could sneak into the underground garage of the hotel. What followed was a rather action-packed stealth scene where we shot down most of the guards using silenced guns. If we didn’t use those, we approached them up-close and forced a knife into their skull. Stealth isn’t really that stealthy in Mafia 3 and the action is as brutal as you would guess from mafia members. It looked great but the AI could use some tweaking, to be honest.
It kind of bothered me to see our main character getting up-close with the guards without them ever noticing his presence. The same goes for all those times we shot a guard a couple of feet away from another guard without the other responding to the sudden death of his colleague. It doesn’t feel natural at all and I do hope this is something the developers will try to fix for the release in October. This little downside was made up for with the brutal killing of the Italian boss but I couldn’t shake the feeling things could have been a little better.
Early conclusion
Mafia 3 certainly nails its retro vibe thanks to great music and impressive map of New Bordeaux. The game could have looked better and the AI is something that still needs improvement. If 2K manages to solve those issues, I’m sure Mafia 3 will be enjoyed by a lot of gamers. It’s not Grand Theft Auto but it’s the best next thing for sure!
